Israel's Kingdom period and he spoke on God's behalf to the leaders of Jerusalem

and Judah. He spoke first of all a message of God's judgment; he warned

Israel's corrupt leaders that their rebellion against their covenant with

God would come at a cost, that God was going to use the great empires of

Assyria and after them Babylon to judge Jerusalem if they persisted in idolatry

and oppression of the poor, but that announcement was combined with a

message of hope. Isaiah believed deeply that God would one day fulfill all of

his covenant promises: that he would send a king from David's line to establish

God's kingdom (remember 2nd Samuel 7), that he would lead Israel in obedience

to all of the laws of the Covenant made at Mount Sinai (remember Exodus chapter 19),

and all of this was so that God's blessing and salvation would flow

outward to all of the nations like God promised to Abraham in Genesis chapter 12,

and it's this hope that compelled Isaiah to speak out against the

corruption and idolatry of Israel in his day. Now the book has a pretty complex literary

design, but there's one simple way to see how it all fits together: chapters 1 through 39

contain three large sections that develop Isaiah's warning of judgment on

Israel, and it all culminates in an event pointed to at the end of chapter 39 - the

fall of Jerusalem and the exile of the people to Babylon - but in chapters 1 to 39

there's also a message of hope that after the exile God's covenant promises

would all be fulfilled, and chapters 40 to 66 pick up that promise of hope and

develops it further. In this video we're just gonna focus on chapters 1 to 39. The

first main section focuses on Isaiah's vision of judgment and hope for

Jerusalem, and it begins as Isaiah accuses the city's leaders of Covenant rebellion,

idolatry, injustice, and God says he's going to judge the city by sending the

nations to conquer Israel. Isaiah says that this will be like a purifying fire

that burns away all that's worthless in Israel in order to create a new

Jerusalem that's populated by a remnant that has repented and turned back to God

and Isaiah says that that's when God's kingdom will come and all nations will

come to the temple in Jerusalem and learn

of God's justice, bringing about a age of universal peace and harmony. Now

it's this basic storyline of the old Jerusalem, purifying judgment into the

New Jerusalem, this is going to get repeated over and over throughout the

book getting filled in with increasing detail. So, at the center of this section

is Isaiah's grand vision of God sitting on his throne in the temple and he's

surrounded by these heavenly creatures that are shouting that God is holy holy

holy, and Isaiah suddenly realizes just how corrupt he and his people Israel are,

and he's certain that he's going to be destroyed by God's holiness, but he's not.

God holiness in the form of this burning coal comes and burns him, but not to destroy,

rather it purifies him from his sin. And as Isaiah ponders this strange experience

God commissions him with a very difficult task: he is to keep announcing

this coming judgment, but because Israel has reached a point of no return his

warnings are going to have a paradoxical effect of hardening the people. But Isaiah

is to trust God's plan. Israel is going to be chopped down like a tree and

left like a stump in a field, and that stump will itself be scorched and burned

but after all of that burning God says that this smoldering stump is a holy

seed that will survive into the future. It's a small sign of hope but who or

what is that Holy Seed? The rest of this section offers an answer. Isaiah

confronts Ahaz, a descendant of David and a King of Jerusalem, and he announces

his downfall. God says that it's the great empire of Assyria who will first

chop Israel down and devastate the land, but there's hope. Because of God's promise to

David he's going to send after this destruction a new king named

Emmanuel, which means "God with us", and Emanuel's Kingdom is going to set God's

people free from violent oppressive empires, and Isaiah describes this coming

king as a small shoot of new growth that will emerge from the old stump of David's

family. It's this king that's the holy seed from chapter six, and the king is

going to be empowered by God's Spirit to

rule over a new Jerusalem and bring justice for the poor and all nations

will look to this messianic king for guidance.

His kingdom will transform all creation bringing peace. Now you finish chapters

1 through 12 with pretty good understanding of Isaiah's message of

judgment and hope, but when will this all happen? Isaiah saw another Empire arising

after Assyria, and thats Babylon, who would also attack Jerusalem and

actually succeed in destroying it, and that brings us in the next sections of

the book. So first we have a large collection of poems that explore God's

judgment and hope for the nations. We learn first of all of the fall of

Babylon and Israel's neighbors. Isaiah could see that a serious world power

would one day be replaced by the empire of Babylon, a nation even more

destructive an arrogant. Babylon's kings claimed that they were higher than all

other gods and so God vows to bring Babylon down. And not only Babylon, Isaiah

goes on to list Israel's neighbors accusing them all of the same kind of

pride and injustice, and he predicts their ultimate ruin. But remember for Isaiah

God's judgment is never the final word for Israel or the nations, and that

leads into the next section with a series of poems that tell a tale of two

cities. There's the lofty city that has exalted itself above God and become

corrupt and unjust. This city is an archetype of rebellious humanity and is

described with language that's all borrowed from Isaiah's earlier

descriptions of Jerusalem and Assyria and Babylon all put together. This city

is destined for ruin and one day is going to be replaced by the New

Jerusalem where God reigns as king over a redeemed humanity from all nations and

there's no more death or suffering. These chapters are the climax to this section

and it shows how Isaiah's message pointed far beyond his own day, it was a message

for all who are waiting for God to bring his justice on violent oppressive

kingdoms and bring his kingdom of justice and peace and healing love. The

following section return the focus to the rise and fall of Jerusalem, and first

we find a whole bunch of poems where Isaiah accuses Jerusalem's leaders for turning to Egypt

for military protection

against Assyria. He knows this will backfire and Isaiah says that only

trust in their God and repentance can save Israel now, which gets illustrated

by the following story about the rise of Hezekiah, king of Jerusalem. Just as Isaiah

predicted, the Assyrian armies come and try to attack the city and so Hezekiah

humbles himself before God and he prays for divine deliverance and the

city is miraculously saved overnight, but Hezekiah's rise is immediately

followed by his fall. So he hosts a delegation from Babylon and he tries to

impress them by showing everything in Jerusalem's treasury and temple and

palaces, it's clearly an effort to make another political alliance for

protection. Isaiah hears about this and he confronts Hezekiah for his foolishness.

He predicts that this ally will one day betray him and return as an enemy to

conquer Jerusalem, and we know from 2nd Kings chapters 24 and 25 that Isaiah

was right. Over a hundred years later Babylon would turn on Jerusalem, come and

destroy the city, its temple, and carry the Israelites away to exile in Babylon.

And so all of Isaiah's warnings of divine judgment in chapters 1 to 39 lead

up to this moment. He's shown to be a true prophet because it all came to pass

like he said. But remember the purpose of God's judgment was to purify Jerusalem

and bring the holy seed and messianic Kingdom over all nations, and it's that

hope that gets explored in the next part of the book, but for now that's what

Isaiah chapters 1 to 39 are all about.